Pickleball Craze Comes to Lakota Junior Schools

“Pickleball is a great sport because it gets everyone active,” said Shawn Finton, Health and Physical Education teacher at Liberty Junior School. “Even students who do not normally enjoy PE find an interest in pickleball.”

Those students aren’t alone in their love for the sport. Even though the game was invented way back in 1965 as a children’s backyard game, pickleball has really taken off in the last decade. In fact, pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the United States for the fourth consecutive year.

“It’s one of those lifelong sports like tennis, but many like it because it is played on a smaller area than tennis,” said Jeff Nation, who began teaching the unit in his Plains Junior PE classes this year. By next year, all of Lakota’s junior schools will include pickleball in the curriculum.

Pickleball is a racket or paddle sport in which two or four players use a smooth-faced paddle to hit a perforated, hollow plastic ball over a 34-inch-high net until one side is unable to return the ball or commits a rule infraction.

But why is it called pickleball? The inventors came up with this made-up, impromptu game using bits and pieces of equipment from other sports. This reminded them of a rowing term called “pickle boat” which refers to a boat whose crew is made up of ‘leftover’ rowers (a crew thrown together from the non-starters of other teams).

It can be played indoors and outdoors, and our junior schools take advantage of that flexibility as well. Courts can be set up on the tennis courts, and the schools have purchased quick net systems that can be used indoors as well.

For some students it is a brand-new sport, while others have already been playing it with their families.

“It only takes a few days to cover the rules and to practice skills before students are up and running their own games,” said Hinton.

Nation added, “It’s a great game to teach sportsmanship and cooperation. Students learn to work together and celebrate their successes and failures – that’s a win-win for me.”

Recently Superintendent Ashley Whitely joined one of Nation’s PE classes to give pickleball a try. “It’s a lot more complicated than I thought, but I had a blast.” Check out her visit in this Let’s Go Lakota video.